


The Sea Ice: -1.8 °C (28.8 °F)

by schmevil



Series: Unusual Efforts [1]
Category: Avengers (Comic)
Genre: Female Protagonist, Gen, Genderswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-16
Updated: 2010-03-16
Packaged: 2017-10-08 01:22:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/71254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schmevil/pseuds/schmevil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>O brave new world, that has such people in it. Always-a-girl!Cap adjusts to life after the ice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sea Ice: -1.8 °C (28.8 °F)

**Author's Note:**

> First in a series of shorts. For [**muccamukk**](http://muccamukk.livejournal.com/)

She goes to sleep.

The world is exploding around her. Bucky falling. The plane on fire. Ice everywhere. Water closing around her, shockingly cold. She swims for the surface. Thinking: kick harder, almost there, can almost touch it. Her heart slows, slows, stops.

***

She wakes in a coffin and all she can see is light. She's moving even before she opens her eyes. It's involuntary - if she was thinking straight, she would have played dead. Her muscles spasm in reaction to--

Her knees, elbows, feet hit the sides of the coffin. Through her eyelids she can see light, everywhere, coming from all directions. She opens them to get a read on her situation. It's a box, or a chamber, lit up like a fair ground, and so small she can't lift her head more than a couple of inches. She sucks in a breath that's so dry, and so cold, it feels like wind over steel, crystal, ice, anything but flesh; like her lungs are new, and filling for the first time. It hurts. It rips through her, ice--

"She's seizing."

"Get her out of there!"

"No she's- she's stabilizing."

"Jesus, this is incredible."

"Is she ok?" A woman, she thinks. That's a woman's voice.

"I think she's... Wasp, keep talking."

"What?"

She takes another breath - still icy, like she's trying to breathe in an Antarctic whiteout - but everywhere else her body is on fire.

"I think she's responding to your voice."

Another spasm. She rides it out, lets it happen, and when it's over, catches her breath, makes a fist and slams it against the roof of the chamber. It's too close to do any damage, but it makes a satisfyingly loud noise. The chamber, it's not metal.

"Get her out of there now, Iron Man!"

"Yeah-- Ant Man, can you--"

Several voices, all male. She counts - three? But she narrows in on the woman, who's steady, who's reassuring, who isn't Peggy, or Spitfire, or anyone she knows. American accents and one foreign -  
something between British and Danish. Iron Man, Ant Man, Wasp - code names?

"It's ok, Stephanie. Just relax - you'll be out of there soon."

All she can see is light, but now it's rippling, dimming - the chamber is moving. Or she is. Her body can't decide if it's hot or cold, and she can't see. They sound American, but she's met SS agents who can do a flawless Jersey accent, so there's no way to tell. She clenches her fists, then relaxes them. Clenches them again. Does the same with her thigh muscles, her calves, every muscle group. Doing her best to be ready, for whatever happens next.

Then the chamber pulls away from her, and she's in a white room. White walls, white floors, white tables, and chairs, and instruments that look like something out of Amazing Stories.

"Stephanie - it's Stephanie right?"

She turns to the woman, and she's-- wearing a pointy helmet. She's a small woman - short and slight, with fine features, wearing an incredibly short dress, with stockings, boots and a pointy helmet. "You're the Wasp," Stephanie says.

"How'd you guess?" She smiles. It's wide, and honest. Terribly pretty. Stephanie wants her to be one of the good guys.

"Just lucky," she says before she really thinks about it. Well, a little conversation had never made things worse with Red Skull or Zemo.

"I'll say," says a man in a red leotard, and a helmet with antennae. "The chances of you living through that, even with the serum, they're-"

"Astronomical!" says a golden robot.

They're both hovering behind Wasp, holding half-forgotten instruments that Stephanie can't identify, and looking all too interested in her. Scientists, she decides. And behind them, is a huge blond man in chain mail and a viking helmet.

"We're the Avengers!" the Wasp says enthusiastically.

When Stephanie just stares at them, the robot adds, "We're superheroes!"

"Verily," says the viking.

"Where am I?" Stephanie asks.

***

It takes hours of convincing, both by the Avengers and by Stephanie herself, and hours more of tests, and then finally, hours of archival footage and jumbled explanations, before she has something like an answer. It's not a satisfying one, but how could it be?

"But how did you find me?"

"We were actually on an unrelated mission," Iron Man says. "This is my boss's sub. It needed testing, and we needed to be in the area."

"It's an incredible piece of machinery," Ant Man earnestly informs her. "The lab is state of the art, and the sensor equipment-"

"I don't think she's interested in hearing about the schematics, high pockets."

"No, but-" Ant Man frowns. It's a strange expression, what with most of his face covered by his bulky helmet, and the high collar and cowl of his leotard. "We would never have found you without it. This was a one in a million chance."

Stephanie nods. She's been in the sea ice for decades, and no one found her in all that time, until a group of superheros stumbled across her by chance.

"Mayhap something dislodged you from the ice shelf."

"Sure," Iron Man says. "But what?"

They debate the possibilities for a while. Stephanie makes a few half-hearted contributions. Super-intelligent orcas is her favourite, courtesy of Ant Man. She quickly gets the impression that this kind of discussion is ordinary for them. With two scientists on the team, it shouldn't be surprising, although her own experience with superheros is different. Maybe the Invaders had just been too busy to indulge in orca theorizing.

Not to say that these Avengers aren't busy. The rushed historical briefing includes a million or so asides of, "We fought a sea monster there," and "Ant Man and Wasp caught him hiding out in Nice. He was prolonging his life with black magic." Along with that she gets the whys and whos of the team.

The robot is not a robot. He's a man in a fantastical suit of armor; bodyguard to the man who designed it, along with the most incredible (and incredibly spacious) submarine she's ever seen. If you're going to start a superhero team, the backing of a genius billionaire - not millionaire, she'd made them repeat it until she was sure - can't hurt.

The backing, and participation, of a Norse god is even better. He introduces himself as Thor, god of thunder, and gives her a shallow bow. He doesn't - and this is a mercy - try to kiss her hand. Being called a 'fair maiden' by a _god_ is enough for one day. She's not prepared to tell him off for it.

Then there's the other two, Wasp and Ant Man. Insect themed crime-fighting partners.

The Avengers. The premiere superhero team of the United States of America, circa 1996.

As for how any of this is possible, the answer is, as it usually is, the super solider serum. And no, neither Ant Man nor Iron Man have any idea about how it works. Miraculously, Stephanie's heart restarted once her body thawed out in the lab of the Avengers sub. They hadn't been trying to resuscitate her - she was, after all an icy corpse, if a nicely preserved one - she'd done that by herself.

The map of the world that Iron Man brings up on the computer screen is alien. The war is fifty years over, and America has seen enough wars since, that Stephanie's has taken on a gloss of nostalgia. Fifty years. She's supposed to be some kind of an icon.

"I had a Captain America t-shirt when I was a kid," the Wasp says brightly, sounding for all the world like Bucky. If he were a handful of years older, and female.

"I saw your uniform in a museum, once." Iron Man adds. "Well, not that one, obviously."

"A museum?"

"Yeah, they had a whole Cap exhibit. News reels, artifacts, installations."

Stephanie frowns at this. Iron Man doesn't react visibly - the suit of armor makes it impossible to read him - but his modulated voice sounds different when he says, "Sorry, this must all be strange."

"Strange." She shrugs and gives him a little helpless grin. "Did you mean the time travel, the Norse god, or the micro miniskirts?"

"The miniskirts, obviously," Wasp says. "The rest is much easier to take."

"Supervillains, time travel, gods." Stephanie scratches the back of her neck absently - the hair has grown out some, but the ice kept it (and her nails) from getting too long. She wonders about the mechanics of it (or the biology, really), and if Ant Man will be able to explain, once he's had a good look at all the data he's gathered. Her hair's grown out from the boyish crop she adopted in deference to the mask and cowl, but not enough to account for the decades that have passed. From what Stephanie can see of Wasp's hair, it's short too, but in a new style. That's somehow stranger than accepting the fact of her continued existence - maybe the small things are harder to take.

"All in a day's work," Iron Man says.

Instead of a response, Stephanie gives him a huge yawn. She just barely manages to cover her mouth in time. She's spent the last few years amongst soldiers and superheroes who, for the most part (and Pinky aside), didn't care about manners, but the habit is so ingrained that her hand shoots up without her really thinking about it. _A lady doesn't...'_ Not that Stephanie was, or had hope of ever being a _lady_.

"You should rest," Wasp says.

"She's right," adds Ant Man. He swivels in his seat, turning from the monitor he's been obsessively studying to frown earnestly at her. "The serum can put you into hibernation, but it can't create a work around for all of the body's natural processes. You need to rest, and build up your reserves again - it used up everything just staying alive all this time"

"Yeah, and my boss would never forgive me if he missed his chance to meet you because we let you stay up late." Stephanie quirks an eyebrow. Iron Man tilts his helmeted head to the side, and raises his gauntlets. She thinks maybe that inside the armor, he's shrugging. Between it and voice modulator, it's hard to read him, but she decides he's trying to be charming.

"I am tired." She stifles another yawn.

"Come on." Wasp beckons Stephanie to follow her. "You can sleep in the other room, until we hit land." She touches her palm to a panel set into the wall, and the door whisks open, receding into the wall. The room lights itself up at the same time. Inside there's a set of bunk beds and a desk. "This is where Iron Man rests his circuits." She frowns at the grey blankets on the bed. "I haven't had a chance to spruce up the sleeping quarters yet..."

"It's wonderful, Wasp." It's the Vanderbilt compared to some of the places she's bedded down.

"It's really not. But I'll leave you to it, for now." She winks at Stephanie and moves to leave, but pauses in the doorway. "Call if you need anything." The door whisks shut behind her. Stephanie eyes it suspiciously, but gives up - there are no obvious mechanisms, just like there aren't anywhere else in the sub, or on Iron Man.

She sits down on the bed. It's soft and the blankets are much nicer than Army issue. Something like a soft, fine wool. It might not be great, as far as Wasp is concerned, but just having a bed to sleep in, without worrying about enemy fire, or pests (because Iron Man's boss obviously keeps a tight ship), is a luxury.

Stephanie's lead a strange life. She's fought alongside Atlanteans and robots. She's battled vampires, werewolves and sorcerers. Fought tooth and nail for an inch of hill, against the purest evil in the world - nothing fantastic, just the human heart bent until it's broken. She punched Hitler. She has the honor of being Captain America, despite being a poor Irish kid from the wrong side of the tracks, and a girl besides.

A man in fantastical armor, two insect-themed crime fighters and a Norse god. She just nods, accepts it, files it in the same general area as Namor, Jim, Spitfire and the rest. The Avengers are the easy part. It's the rest that's a problem. Time travel ("Not time travel, strictly speaking."), a changed world, one that she needs to find a place in, and so much gone. Friends gone. What happened to Nick, and Dum Dum, and Peggy? To the Invaders? To Arnie?

She slides into the bed and pulls the covers tight around her, marveling at how easily her muscles move. Yesterday she'd been frozen in a block of ice - there ought to be more of a price for that, shouldn't there? She closes her eyes and slows her breathing, using a trick that Peggy had taught her. Peggy could sleep anywhere, at any time, when she needed to. Stephanie had been happy to learn to do the same. In a war, you never knew when you'd be able to catch a nap, much less a full night's sleep. She forces her breathing to slow, slow, slow. She silences all the clamoring voices in her head.

Finally, she slips into sleep.

***

She wakes twice, during the journey to dry land. Bucky's name is a strangled whisper, barely vocalized. Each time, she wakes sweating, and for a second, blindly panicked. Once she quiets her breathing, she quickly falls asleep. She's so tired.


End file.
